CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Two days later, Old Chippy arrived in Kreplon City train station; a grandiose looking place, if that was what one could call all the rusty looking colossal metal arches above with their glass roves punctured with holes like a meteor hit not too long ago.
The train station was situated on the outskirts of the city, just a few hundred yards away from the barren, tapering and cylindrical buildings, most of which had their tops and sides blasted off. Huge scorch marks were a testimony to the previous harvests that once took place. The sunlight shone down on their corpse into their vast hollows that were once business offices, entertainment lounges and schools. Any sign of an aerial highway was erased long ago, and only scavenging birds flew about with a lonely caw.
Well, that was just for the top of the buildings, anyway. Way below, were most of the architecture had a four-sided appearance with domed roves, the people were at their daily activities on the streets; all nycarmans.
Unlike Suride Town, most residents here had some vehicles left back form when they had hidden them during the riots and looting that happened in the Third Great War years ago. But with the lack of fuel, most of the rusted relics of once wealthy people had to be broken down to use as carriages for mynamathers and greshkues.
Some motorists, who had the money, could afford ethanol fuel being grown from huge farms of algae from one of the many Green-Puff Houses throughout the city; buildings noted for their circular tapering stones roves and chimneys puffing out greenish-tinge smoke. As a result the air in the city left a bitter taste in one’s mouth.
Most efficient hovercars were own by the police force, or the very rich who could afford large weapons to scare off vandals trying to scrap their precious vehicles for parts with various dealers through the Underworld. Most hovercars had the design of a sleek, oval nut with crescent projection at the upper-side, an ovoid windshield at the front and wing-like doors at the sides. Beneath the projections were antigravity pads that lift the cars ten inches off the ground.
The city was desolated, but not because the people have suddenly up and vanished, but because they had all gone to the train stations to express their opinion of the new arriving aliens into their country—which was hurling projectiles from the platforms at the train.
“What the hell’re they doing?” Joey said, peeping through the edge of the window at sea of purple faces twisting in anger and disgust, much like how Joey’s face would he couldn’t get a meal when he was living in the streets.
“Obviously they are trying to kill us!” Lezura said from beside him.
A bottle broke near the window and sent the two of them and three others ducking for cover. They heard another series of broken bottles on the side of the train before seconds passed and it stopped. When they looked back up, they saw the security forces of the train going over the sides to meet the crowd.
In the train the built up tension was held to throat at a stiffening level. A few people had already drawn their small arms, and were hurling back insults at the nycarmans outside.
“All you go eat a bag of shit!” Joey said. “Don’t you all know that the Rakai and his Chevalier are inside here?”
“Keep your head down, you…” Lezura said, pushing Joey down from the window. She was certain that anyone inside saw Joey get hit, the Rakai get hit, by a projectile from the protestors that would surely spark a physical confrontation not even the security personnel could stop.
Luckily the captain and his men were already on the initiative. The men went on both sides of the train station were the people had gathered like ants around a crumb of sweet-bread. They fired off a series of gunshots in the air, scattering people back from the front of the crowd. But the mass of nycarmans had been deterred into a run.
This however, was cured when some of the soldiers produced Hypersonic Screech Cannons; HSC for short. Basically it was a speaker attacked to a squat gun, but with noticeable large strings built into the center like some devious cross between a cannon and a violin. It vibrated the strings at a high frequency that produced a searing sound in the ears of ordinary aliens, which caused discomfort, but in a nycarman it was the equivalent of having acid, fire, cold water and stale urine.
With their earmuffs equipped, the HSC holders pulled back on the trigger, and the weapon bucked slight in their hands and stream of horrendous sound whistled out of the speakers. Immediately the people convulsed and hollered in agony, clamping their hands over their ears in their retreat.
The soldiers on the entrance side to train station, led by the slender-faced captain, formed an advancing wall that pushed the civilians back through the cracked and withered support columns of the building and out the steps.
The captain saw a few people resisting his leniency by tying clothes around their heads and ears and hurling weapons at him. He ducked beneath a stone, pulled out his lance-pistol and fired two shots at them.
A man fell with his two holes in his chest, and the others immediately got the message and took off.
The captain groaned, shook his head and holstered his weapon, pissed off such ignorance had to cause the loss of a life.
He looked around and said sharply, “Where the hell is our escort already?”
From the other side the soldiers were hoarding the people like karoties around the train and towards the exit.
“That’s right you little pussies!” Joeys said, “Keep your asses—Whaa!”
A blow to his head from Lezura silenced Joey. Lezura lowered her fist and said, “Watch your mouth around me, boy…”
“It just slipped out!” Joey said. “You didn’t have to crash a damn truck in my head!”
The copper colored steps leading from the grey and white floor of the train stations’ waiting platforms led to streets invested with sprouts of grass and flowers, bordered at the sides by a seven meter high fence with small warehouses, stores and even a few homes on the other side.
Some people went right down the branching streets pass the bus stops while others took over the fences, landing awkwardly in the yellow grass.
A convoy of light blue hovertrucks coming down the street with a loud series of hums split the fleeing people in the middle and onto the sidewalk. They had a similar design to the hovercar, only with a rounded front and flat, lower edges near the rear.
With the danger gone the security forces escorted the people from the train in a hurried mash up through the doors. Lezura held onto Joey and pressed him close to her in fear that he might get squashed. Somehow Joey knew what she was doing, and wasn’t too happy about it.
With great effort they manage to form something close to resembling a line and led out into the warm air towards the trucks.
“Get moving!” the captain said, looking around the place with an agitated furrow of his forehead. Those people weren’t the real danger here…
The immigrants loaded up a short ramp from the rear of the truck into its silvery interior. All the seats were removed to make more space for the people to squat in.
Joey stumbled forward inside, almost getting stomped in the head by a passing yautgan. He tasted oily, sour dirt particles that flew into his mouth and spat them out. He hurried up with Lezura’s help and found themselves a spot next to a soldier standing alertly inside.
Once all the trucks were near filling up the captain went to the truck down at the end, which would become the lead was they turned around. He stepped onto a ledge at the side and spoke up to the driver.
“Just head straight to the camp,” he said, “do not stop for anyone or anything. Any Hapchenan that gets too close to the convoy do not hesitate to run them over.”
“Got it, Captain,” said the man.
The captain looked down the line and saw that everyone was inside the trucks. He tapped the driver on his shoulder and said, “Get going.”
The captain stepped away and head back to the train station to his post with the rest of the train security. He wasn’t too sad about leaving the immigrants in the hands of the others.
The rear truck neatly spun on its antigravity pads all the way around until it faced the other end of the street and drove off. It kept up a slow pace as the others turned around, and once they were all in line the pace picked up.
With the inside wreaking of sweaty bodies and the peculiar smell of what was once inside the truck, some people fought out of their tight confines amongst each other and stood up.
Following these people, Joey saw the eerie skyscrapers in the distance; with blast holes here and there and the walls peeled off their metallic frames. All the bridge and tube like structure that connect them were severed and blown apart like slashed arteries. Lezura stood beside him and gazed on also in eerie silence as the wind rippled over their faces.
“What happened here…?” Joey said.
“Harvest,” Lezura said emotionlessly. “Judging by the state of the decay here, I would say it stopped about three to four years ago.”
Joey didn’t ask any more questions; the images he had seen of the harvests on Lezura’s data-scroll were popping up in his head. And as they did, gunshots started to pop of in the air.
He and Lezura stooped as did everyone else.
“What the hell is it now?” Joey said.
“I have no clue—” Lezura stopped herself, remembering the kind of people living around the area.
The officers accompanying the drivers of the truck reached for their radios and hurried exchanged information and orders with each other.
There were more hostile gunshots, accompanied with return fire from the security officers in the truck. Gunshots ripped holes in the side of the truck that Joey and Lezura were in, striking a lazhinian woman in the shoulder and a geckoid in the back.
A strenuous movement of limbs rippled through the truck as the people moved to the injured man; even the woman who got shot. Her muscles effectively popped the bullets out of her wound.
“The hell…?” Joey said in disbelief, looking at the bleeding man in the truck. At first it just seemed annoying with the people at the train station, but now they were actually taking up arms against them?
Lezura’s ears shifted through the low-decibels of the gunfire and listened for any other signs of the enemy. She heard loud engines that were the common wheeled vehicles most people in the Underworld used, and found that their attackers were close. She felt the truck turn onto another street, and the vehicles still followed.
After waiting for a series of gunfire to stop, Lezura and Joey simultaneously peeped over the top of the truck, and saw bulky, rusted motorcycles riding by the side. They had two wheels at the front and back beside each other, providing stability on the road as the driver zipped back and forth, closer and further from the truck to get a good shot or get out of the line of fire.
Unfortunately this didn’t go so well for them, and one bike up at the front had its riders gunned down horrendously, throwing their bodies splashed with yellow in the street and steering the bike into a small shop where it crashed into the metallic wall. Luckily the occupants there had got up and scampered away.
One of the backseat riders in front of Joey and Lezura put away his gun and produced a bottle he subsequently lit. With one clean toss he hurdled the Molotov, or as it was popularly called in this side of e galaxy, bottled-boom, at the truck.
Joey said, “Oh—”
Joey and Lezura ducked along with officers. One of the truck securities was already shooting one motorcycle. By the time he had riddled both men with bullet holes the bottled-boom hit the truck, exploding in liquid-fire that splashed everywhere.
One officer got some of the flammable liquid in his face. He yelped and hollered in agony as the flames cooked his flesh. He threw his weapon away and fell back in the truck, clapping at his face to put out the fire.
Lezura quickly lurched towards the man, forcefully pulled away his hand and swept away the fire with a gust of her honoi.
Now, It couldn’t be said that it was that particular incident that sparked it, but all Joey knew was that after it happened, some people suddenly got up, started fire honoi if they could use it, hurl heavy items they knew wouldn’t miss—and Joey knew he had to join the fun.
With a giddy smile Joey crawled and climbed to the other side of the truck. He popped up his head and felt a bullet nip his cheek. He recoiled and slapped a hand on his face.
“Son-of-a-bitch!” Joey said.
Along with a largaph woman firing from a crude looking crossbow Joey charged up a Bluebolt that whacked into the thigh of the gunner, blasting flesh and blood out of a messy hole.
The man reached after his thigh, and lurched off screaming into the street. The woman beside Joey had a bullet clip off a plate of her skull, steering her aim off a little, but the rapid fire of the crossbow landed two arrows in the shoulder of the driver.
He tilted with the bike, toppling it over onto him. Both skidded in the street, leaving streaks blood.
Joey threw his hands up and screamed in triumph. He embraced the woman beside him and both of them fell on the floor.
The convoy went from a heard of gampadons being picked off by gufders, to gampadons firing weapons from all angles at their cowering would-be killers, sending them scattering across to other streets and between buildings and out of sight.
Just as quickly as they had come, they were sent on their way with a boot of lead up their behinds.
The convoy erupted in a chorus of victorious roar, even though two civilians were dead and three officers.
Joey got off the embarrassed woman and found Lezura. He almost slipped in a pile of mud left by a Xemingi as he pressed through the crowd to embrace Lezura.
The blushing Lezura said, “What—what are you doing?”
“We just kicked their assess!” Joey said, letting go of Lezura to jump amongst the other people.
Lezura sat down in a corner of the truck beside as the unconscious lazhinian who got his faced burned. She had healed the officer’s face as best as she could, now she would leave his natural regenerative abilities to do the best.
Apart from severing the head or destroying the brain, fire was one of the few things that could effectively kill a lazhinian. With that thought, Lezura remembered the Great Scorching she had once read in her history class—where millions of lazhinians on their homeworld burnt and ate each other just to reduce their numbers to prevent over population.
She shuddered at the thought, and was graciously happy to replace them with that of the people before her. All of them were aliens that had just killed her people. Yet that was not how she felt about it. In her eyes, these people had just won a very rare victory that the people in Underworld rarely had the chance to meet.
Come to think of it, we have had a good running of luck so far, she thought.
They had survived and attack by orderrans, twice—now they had managed to drive away members of the Hapchenan.
But Lezura remembered, like another side of her telling her to know better. No, we have not won anything! The orderrans will be coming for us, and we have just declared war on the Hapchenan just hours within entering their own country.
And in all of it, she saw how happy Joey had come to be. Lezura wondered if he had come to grasps with taking another’s life.
She shook her head, and hung it with a loud sigh. She wondered how much longer this would go on.
Hours later, after driving through the city with a few nycarmans bombarding the convoy with insults in hopes of stirring up fear in the aliens, they reached the camp site.
“Wait a hoot-tootin minute!” Joey said with his forehead wrinkled beyond belief, “This is the camp site?”
Lezura shrugged with her eyebrows. “I guess so…”
“Boy,” said a dracoid male behind them, “I was better off living in my little wooden shack than this dump!”
And he wasn’t exaggerating that much either. The convoy drove unto a desolated street with a few soldiers stationed as guards along the side. At the end of it was a twenty meter high, thick gate mesh fence surrounding the camp site for nearly four hundred yards.
Simply put the campsite was piles and mountains of rubble from a skyscraper that had been blasted by means of a particle-beam cannon. Half of its length had fallen to the ground, breaking up into smaller pieces, some of which still had intact rooms. Metallic beams and frames jutted out from the debris like arrows from the hide of a dead greshku, some as long as thirty meters and as thick as a grown nycarman male’s body.
“Looks like the gods didn’t have a good fanbase here,” a lazhinian in the truck said, getting approving chuckles.
The convoy stopped meters from the heavy metal, dark grey gates. Sunlight glinted off the spikes on top of it. The back of the trucks opened and soldiers on the outside came to help the people out.
Joey told Lezura to wait back, so as the crowd grew less they could see if they left anything behind.
“Really Joey?” she said.
Joey frowned mockingly. “Yeah…really!” he said.
Joey looked around and found a few coins. He took them up and put them in his pocket. He saw a knife and put it in his bag. He spotted a small pistol, smiled, and reached after it, only to find that it was lying in the blue, smears of blue blood left by the dead raizean.
Joey shuddered and decided he could do without it.
“Hey there,” said a soldier at the end of the truck, “get you behinds out already!”
“Come one, Joey,” Lezura said.
She pulled him by the collar for a while before they got out.
Outside was a little cleaner than in the truck, and the skies above clear. But the air had a bitter smell and taste of charcoal and ethanol in Joey’s mouth.
The two civilians that died were wrapped up tightly in clothes and carried into the camp. The dead officers were taken out of the truck and carried to the side of the road in a small post.
Escorted by the few police officers from Suride Town, the civilians were led through the huge gates as they pushed open with a creaky hum by electronic mechanisms.
“We should find a nice spot,” Joey said, “you know; so we can look out over the city and stuff.”
“That is actually not a bad idea,” said Lezura.
Joey slapped Lezura on her shoulder. “Race ya—”
Joey ran off through the crowd before Lezura could get a hold of him. She sighed heavily, and said, “Little rascal…”
But in no time she heard Joey calling to her from above, “Hey! Brace-face!”
Lezura looked around, trying to step from the tall heads of the yautgans and dracoids. She spotted a glimmer of light way over to her left, and pulled her goggles over her eyes. She zoomed in the glimmer and found that it was coming off Joey’s sword. He waved it in the air from the open into a torn off part of the building some two stories up.
The path leading up to the opening was a hellish obstacle course of large stones and slabs of broken walls, a few metallic scraps and even some household appliances—leading Lezura to assume it must have been an apartment building.
Lezura was glad she wasn’t a woman with preference for heels, or else she would’ve broken both ankles twenty times already going up the slope.
Reaching the entrance Joey ran back inside. The sunlight was adequate enough for Lezura to identify what was inside, but she still activated the lights on the upper corners of her goggles to see the finer details.
How convenient, Lezura thought, looking at dusty old bed with a few chunks eaten out that Joey was jumping up and down on.
Lezura wanted to tell Joey to stop, that there were harmful bacteria present that could kill him, but she remembered that she already gave him an immunization shot.
Looking around closer Lezura saw a broken flat-screen TV lying on the ground and an overturned wardrobe.
She noticed the broken socket for the light bulb was on the wall next to the bed, and with the position of the door horizontally at the back Lezura realized that they were actually standing on what was the room’s wall. The green painting in the room had been hideously peeled away like it was scraped by the claws of a cossik. Broken glass surrounded the TV, and a broken chair was in another corner.
Joey leaped off the bed and onto the floor with a crunch. “Too bad about the TV though…” he said, kicking it.
Lezura walked to the horizontal door and peered inside. From it ran a corridor into what used to be the living room. It was stark dark inside, and Lezura figured this was where all the living space ended.
She turned to Joey and said, “First off, we should contact my friend.”
“Okay,” said Joey. “How’re we goanna do that again…?”
Lezura placed her bag on the bed and sat down on the edge. She took Sheikon-box from off her waist.
As Joey sat next to her Lezura clenched her hand around the box, and after briefly channeling her honoi inside it the top flipped open and out poured massive amounts of honoi.
When Donnowarru constructed his body, he stretched and yawned. He stared at the two aliens on the bed blankly, and said, “What the hell is it now?”
“I need to contact my friend,” said Lezura, “you can detect honoi across hundreds of miles, and I have a memory of the personality of honoi my friend has.”
Donnowarru crouched on the ground, only giving his surroundings a brief glance before he laid his ignorant eyes on Lezura. “You want me to harmonize with you, I see…”
Their conversation was in Naasi tongue, but Joey could understand with translator.
“What’s harmonizing, Lez?” he said.
Lezura said, “Harmonizing is an advanced technique two honoi users can do to increase the power of their honoi. The two partners send their honoi into each other’s body, but instead of the opposite honoi pushing back each other, they flow together and create a current of strong energy between them that is passed onto the honoi of the two partners—blast!” Lezura clamped held her head in terror. “Joey, we have not tried harmonizing all of this time!”
“Well, I have no intension of staying here and watch you two do it,” said Donnowarru. “Let us just hurry up with this so I can be on my way.”
Joey laughed lightly. “Dude,” he said, “you’re talking as if you’re going on a trip. You’re going back in the damn box as usual…”
“It is much better than looking at you two assess,” Donnowarru said.
Lezura stood up and said, “That is far enough, you two. Donnowarru please let us begin…”
Donnowarru sighed and slowly rose to his feet. He stood before Lezura, his height just a foot above hers. Both of them slowly placed their hands in front of them and clasped them together.
Joey grinned, rocking back and forth with glee.
“Shut up!” both nycarmans said.
Normally, two people couldn’t just harmonize like that. Not everyone’s honoi current was able to flow with the honoi of another. Donnowarru, however, being a wizard with decades of experience in using honoi, was able to match his honoi flow with that of others.
When he and Lezura shared their honoi, the cool feeling that was usually associated with honoi changed into a warm one. Their skin tingled and their hair shivered by the roots. Whitish-purple light crackled between their hands.
All the while Joey took in this display with a steady focus as great as how Lezura would usually study her books.
After just four seconds they let go of each other, hands still crackling with the supercharged honoi. Lezura approached the mouth of the room, and fired a massive Blueburst into the air that buck her body almost to the point of toppling over.
The arrow was five times the size with a purple tinge and a longer tail. Beaming into the azure above it exploded in a wide shockwave that almost instantly disappeared in twinkling particles. Below the massive popping sound snapped the heads of the civilians and officers into the sky with alarmed and curious whispers.
Those tiny particles, having been enhanced and with Donnowarru’s honoi, would travel for miles across the city to be picked up by anyone with the ability to sense honoi.
“Shit!” Joey said, flying to his feet and staring into the sky. “Lezura we gotta do that!” When he looked at Lezura she was crouched with her hands on her head. “Lezura…?”
Joey knelt beside her. Lezura’s breath was hollow, with her eyes shut and blood running from one nostril down her mouth.
“Crap!” Joey put his hand under his shirt and used it to wipe the blood off. “Lezura can you stand?”
Lezura slowly nodded, and carefully stood and was helped over to the bed by Joey.
“There are some sweets in the small compartment of my bag…” Lezura said.
“Oh yeah…?” Joey said with a surprised tone. He quickly rolled the bag over to find the small compartment Lezura pointed out. “All this time I’ve been craving some sugar and you’ve been hiding out on me? Not that your nice butt wouldn’t do too…”
Lezura managed to chuckle at Joey trying to make light at the situation.
Joey found the sweets and gave them to Lezura in her hand. After eating a few she said to Donnowarru crouched on the ground, “Thank you for your help, Donnowarru. You have really been a savior to us.”
Donnowarru shrugged. “Hand me a sweet and let me go already,” he said.
Lezura tossed one to him and Donnowarru ate it. Lezura opened up the Sheikon-box and called Donnowarru inside. Lezura put the box back on her utility belt and lay back in the dusty old bed. Some little bits of rubble were sticking in her back, but she couldn’t care less as her throbbing head slowly caught onto some peace.
“Now what?” said Joey.
“We wait until my friend finds us,” Lezura said.
But sitting there and waiting wasn’t all that the two of them did, or got the chance to do.
An officer from their group came to them and inquired if they had anything to do with the display in the sky. After Lezura admitted to it, the officer warned them to refrain from doing such things while in the camp and when the Kreplon security forces are around, as they were already giving them a hard time in the discussion of providing assistance in protection against the Hapchenan.
With that little finger wagging gone, Joey and Lezura decided to use up what was left of their day wisely. First, Lezura went into the rest of the camp, walking from hollowed out rubble to rubble in search of pots to prepare a meal for her and Joey.
Despite being quite famous, Lezura was still a nycarman amongst aliens, and not many were so willing to share. Luckily she met upon the inn keeper, Tololon, who offered her two bowls of stew to take back to Joey.
“Thank you,” Lezura said.
Tololon covered up back her huge soup pot she had brewing outside her home and said, “No worries, yes. I consider you friends of mine now!” Her eyes narrowed at Lezura, “Expect you to pay for the hole you blasted in my building…”
Lezura fluttered fifty times before she said, “But wait a minute now! How do you know it was even us?”
Tololon said, “I read your mind. Very sorry, yes, yes. But you thinking how you escaped before I see you.”
“I thought you said you were never going to read peoples’ minds again!” said Lezura. “And besides, it is not as if you work at the inn anymore.”
“Sorry,” said Tololon, “but not because I small mean you can bully me.” Tololon smiled brightly. “Anyway, enjoy your meal, yes?”
When Lezura turned around she was looking right at Joey. Startled, she jerked back and nearly spilled the stew.
“Which one’s mine?” Joey said.
“You have some nerve asking for food like that,” Lezura said.
“Okay,” said Joey. He clasped his hands and pouted, “Please give me some of your food, Lez-Lez?”
“Please do not call me Lez-Lez,” she said, handing a bowl to Joey, “Lezura or Lez is quite fine. I do not wish have my name mutated into some shortcut, backwards word.”
“Whatever,” Joey said. He sat on a nearby stone and began eating.
Lezura followed him, and when the two where finished, Tololon stretched out her hand and said, “That will be fifty yerks!”
“I can’t believe the cute little green lady ripped us off so badly,” Joey groaned, swatting a stone with his sword out of his way. “And I can’t believe you even paid her, Lezura!”
“We have to try and be on the good side of the people here, Joey,” Lezura said.
“How much money do we have left?” Joey said.
“I have four thousand yerks left,” Lezura said. “So long as no one tries to rip us off it may serve us for a while.”
Walking back to their home, Joey and Lezura were drawn to a large circle of people cheering and eagerly. The ones at the front where hunched over looking down at something, those in the back stood on the balls of their feet to look over into the center—not the yautgans or dracoids though.
“Wanna go have a look?” Joey asked Lezura.
“I suppose we could spare a few minutes before we go back to your training,” she said.
When they reached the circle, they heard all manner remarks clearly:
“Kill him! Kill the little shit!”
“Don’t let me do